Cultural Mapping for Marketing
So what the heck is cultural mapping for marketers and what value does it add? Let's explore!
Your customer journey maps show you what people do. Your analytics tell you when they do it. But cultural mapping reveals why they do it. And more importantly, why they stop.
Think of it this way: if customer data is the what and journey mapping is the how, then cultural mapping is the why and the what's next. It's the cultural (digital) anthropological lens that reveals the invisible currents shaping consumer behaviour.
I've worked with many brands to bring cultural mapping into their teams as a digital anthropologist and building on my 20+ years in MarCom. A unique set of skills. Another upside is that you get insights for brand and marketing strategies as well.
When you start to layer in cultural insights, they soon become indispensable and even add more depth to personas and audience data. And it can become an early warning radar for market disruption. Think of it a bit like having predictive intelligence too.
I recently worked with a supplement company's analytics that showed Gen Z had high awareness but low conversion. Customer journey mapping optimised the funnel. But cultural mapping revealed the real issue: Gen Z trust "wellness" differently from other segments - they see it as millennial self-care theatre.
The cultural insight? Gen Z wants "optimisation" language, not wellness language. They want to feel like they're hacking their own health, not like spa-goers. One messaging pivot increased Gen Z conversions by 24.6%.
Cultural mapping is essentially ethnographic intelligence for brands. Instead of just tracking clicks and conversions, you're tracking the cultural codes, social meanings, and collective narratives that drive those behaviours.
It's like having a radar for cultural shifts before they show up in your KPIs. Remember how TikTok's algorithm wasn't just technically superior? It tapped into a cultural desire for authentic, unpolished content that Instagram's perfection-obsessed, highly aesthetic culture had created a backlash against. A cultural map would have caught that tension months before it showed up in engagement metrics.
So how does cultural mapping work? I've developed a framework that enables me and those I train, to move fairly fast. It involves looking at some of your marketing data, a mix of CRM insights, web analytics and social media analytics. Then some social listening, especially in forums and subreddits. Key is finding communities, that's where the insights come from.
It's looking at how emojis are used, group (tribal) language, hierarchies of these communities, seasonal things, rituals and customs they've developed. Things an anthropologist is trained to look at and understand. This is where you go beyond the data.
A framework helps a lot. Often times, I train marketing teams on how to do this and it's good to do it twice a year because online culture evolves very quickly. Another benefit is that you can quickly identify issues you want to avoid in your strategies and for campaign creative and messaging.
